


Everything dies baby that's a fact, but maybe everything that dies someday comes back

by warlockinatardis



Category: Criminal Minds, Torchwood
Genre: Gen, Other Additional Tags to Be Added, POV Multiple, Post-Episode: s02e01 Kiss Kiss Bang Bang, Season/Series 08 Spoilers, we are torchwood holiday gift exchange
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2016-12-31
Updated: 2017-02-07
Packaged: 2018-09-13 17:45:38
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 4
Words: 3,811
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9134566
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/warlockinatardis/pseuds/warlockinatardis
Summary: Reid and Prentiss go to Cardiff for a relaxing holiday, because nothing weird ever happens in Cardiff, right?





	1. The prologue

**Author's Note:**

> So this is my gift to [to-reach-the-farthest-star](http://to-reach-the-farthest-star.tumblr.com/) on tumblr at the we are torchwood holiday gift exchange. I hope you like this! I haven't finished this yet (because of my poor time management and that I happened to get sick), but I have most of the chapters written and only need to edit them, so you can expect more chapters during the next week.  
> The title comes from a song called Atlantic City by Bruce Springsteen (it's fantastic song, you should listen it!)
> 
> I don't own any of the characters or anything else you can recognize.

They were lost. They had seen a bright white light and then they had fallen. It had been cold and dark, there was no one to see. They had eventually found the humans again. But these humans were different. The humans’ minds were different, They could feel it even far away. It made hunting easier, a lot easier for Them. 

They were in that new world for days until they found a human that was so different from everyone else. The human smelled so different, but so familiar. He smelled like thee travelers that stopped by at Their home. They wanted him. He was going to be Theirs.

They got closer to him, his mind was also different. They brushed past him and the human flinched away. They were afraid that he somehow knew what They were trying to do, so They ran and knocked onto someone else, someone whose mind was almost as brilliant and different as the man’s that had already become Their prey. 

“Sorry”, the other man said. They knew now, They had two preys to hunt now. Maybe They would then be strong enough to try to find a way home.


	2. Profiling Team Torchwood

Chapter 1

Reid had come to the UK to see Emily and to spent some of his long overdue vacation days. It had been hard since Maeve died and Hotch had agreed with him that he needed the time away, so he had called Emily and booked the flight to London a week later. They had spent few days in London, Emily had taken him to the Sherlock Holmes museum and to other places every tourist visited. Since it was Emily’s vacation too, they decided to go to Cardiff, where Emily nor Reid had ever been. It was good for both of them to get away from work for a while.

***

Emily flopped on her bed. Reid looked around the room, it was similar to his; a bed on the right side of the room and opposite of the door that led to Reid’s room. Both of their rooms had a wardrobe in the corner near the door and a small bathroom. 

“I’m starving”, Emily complained, but she was smiling, which made Reid smile too.

“The Hotel’s restaurant is still open, we could go there?” Reid suggested, he was hungry as well, it had been a long day for both of them, even though the train trip to Cardiff from London wasn’t that long, it had managed to exhaust both of them.

“Sounds good to me!” she jumped up from the bed to get her bag. Reid smiled and followed her out of her hotel room.

***

The group caught Reid’s attention immediately when they stepped in the restaurant. The group consisted of three men and two women. It was the man in the WWII era greatcoat however that made the group stand out and the fact that they were talking loudly, well at least the man with a London accent was.

“Of all the days your ex just had to pick the day you decided to swan back. And why did he have to shoot me again?” he complained whilst the others shot him disapproving glances.

“Could you just shut up for a moment? It’s bad enough that we have to stay here and avoid ourselves for the next 12 hours without you moaning all the time”, the welshwoman on the right snapped.

“Look at the bright side, you’ve got 12 hours of no rift alerts, consider it a mini-holiday before we have to get back to work. I don’t know about you, but I’m starving and I’d like to order, if you don’t mind”, the tall guy in the greatcoat said.

“What do you think about them?” Emily asked. Reid shrugged.

“It sounds like they’ve had a rough day, they look tired. Maybe they work with the police?” Reid suggested just as their food arrived. 

“Makes sense, the guy did say he got shot, though I can’t imagine what he’s doing in a restaurant and why he isn’t in a hospital”, Emily mused. “Maybe they work for the government, top secret things and all that”

“What, don’t look so surprised! I haven’t stopped profiling even though I don’t work in the BAU anymore. And it’s more than obvious that the guy with the military coat is their boss”, Emily said with a smug smile and sipped her wine. Reid looked over at the group again just in time to see the waiter blush as he took the boss’ order. He could see the tension around them, and it seemed to only grow every time the rest of the group looked at their boss. 

“They got some unresolved problems and they seem to be all about the boss”, he observed and turned back to his food. It felt good to profile with Emily again, even when it was just for fun.

“He must have done something to upset them, because otherwise they seem to be really close”, Emily said quietly. “And I bet that the boss and the cute guy in the suit are together, or at least used to be”, she added with a knowing smile. 

“Why do you think so?” Reid asked, confused, just as the group started laughing loudly.

“Just look at them. The Suit looks at the Boss with this look, like he’s worried and just a little bit in love, but he only looks at the Boss when he thinks he isn’t looking. Same goes for the Boss, he looks like a lovesick puppy”, Emily explained and Reid glanced at the group. Emily was right, the Boss was looking at the Suit like his whole world revolved around him.

“I think you are right”, Reid mused 

“Where do you want to go tomorrow?” Emily asked, efficiently changing their topic away from profiling to their vacation. Reid smiled.

“Well I’ve always wanted to visit the Roald Dahl Plass…”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I hope you enjoyed! Leave a comment or kudos. The next chapter will most likely get published over the next week or sooner, depending on how long it takes for me to edit it.


	3. The Plass, weevils and chance meetings

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Here we go again with a new chapter. I'm sorry this took so long, but for some reason I struggled a lot with writing this. 
> 
> I don't own anything you can recognize.

Chapter 2

They woke up late the next morning. After a quick breakfast at the hotel restaurant, they walked to the Plass that wasn’t too far away from their hotel. Reid was as excited as a little kid around Christmas and kept talking the whole way to the Plass. Emily learned a lot about not only Roald Dahl, but also about Cardiff’s history during the day.

“Hey, weren’t those two over there at the sculpture?” Emily asked and pointed at the man and woman walking in the distance.

Reid shielded his eyes from the sun before he replied. “I think so, it’s the guy in the suit and the Asian woman”

“I wonder what they are doing here, it looks like they are just standing there” Emily thought out loud. “Come on, we are supposed to be on vacation, less thinking, more sight-seeing!” she said grabbing Reid’s arm and dragged him to a cafe they’d seen earlier. It kept bothering her throughout the day, something just wasn’t right with those people, she could tell that it bothered Reid too, even though he never said anything.

***

It was already getting dark before they started walking back towards their hotel. Emily was tired, but she was happy. She had missed Reid and she couldn’t remember when had been the last time she had been as relaxed or laughed as much as she had on the past day, it more than likely that it had been before she had to fake her own death. 

Reid suddenly stopped talking and walking, he was staring at the alley on their left. Emily could just make a silhouette of a young woman before she moved further into the shadows. That was also when Reid came back to life and sprinted to the alley.

“Reid! Wait, stop! Spencer!” she shouted, but it seemed like he couldn’t hear her at all. She caught him just as he was turning on the alley. There was no one there, just a faint smell of rubbish and… roses?

“I saw her, I saw Maeve”, Reid whispered, still staring at the spot the young woman had been standing only a short while ago.

“Reid, it couldn’t have been her”, Emily said gently. The team had called her many times in the aftermath of Maeve’s death, they had been so worried about him, and Emily had been too when Reid hadn’t answered his phone at all for weeks.

“But I saw her!” Reid almost begged. It broke her heart to see the tears in his eyes.

“She’s dead, Spence, it couldn’t have been her”, Emily whispered.

“I’m not crazy. I saw her, it wasn’t anyone else!” Reid screamed. Emily lifted her hand up.

“I know that you are not. It could have been a trick of light. I only saw a woman standing here in the shadows, she could have been anyone. Come on, let’s get back to the hotel, okay?” Reid took a deep breath and nodded. When they turned around Emily heard something. It sounded like a growl, but it didn’t sound like a dog or anything else that could have been standing behind them on a dark alley in the middle of Cardiff.

“Did you hear that too?” Reid asked quietly. Emily nodded. They turned slowly around. It wasn’t a stray dog behind them like Emily had hoped. She wasn’t exactly sure what it was. The thing was roughly the same size as a human, but it’s face looked anything but a human’s face. It was wearing a grey jumpsuit of sorts, that much she could make out before the thing jumped forward.

“Run!” 

***

“The rift was more active than it ever has for the first few weeks”, Toshiko explained and showed the data they had collected from the three months he’d been away. Jack had expected the rift to act up after it had been opened, and as it seemed, he had been right.

“Other than the rift being more active, is there anything else I should know about?” Jack asked looking at his team. They had grown a lot closer while he’d been away. 

“There was a rift alert that was big enough that something might have come through a week or so before you… came back. But we didn’t find anything when we went to investigate and there have been some weird deaths after that”, Gwen said quietly. 

“What do you mean you couldn’t find anything?” Jack demanded. If something had come through, they should have found it.

“We couldn’t find anything, because we were three hours late!” Owen shouted, “We were late, because we were busy trying not to get killed by aliens that had come through the rift that we didn’t know how to catch, because the information for that was not archived in the Mainframe, but you would have known that and you weren’t here!” Jack stayed quiet. There was nothing he could say to make it better, it wasn’t like he could go back in time to be there when they had needed him. 

“I’m sorry that I left you on your own, but I had to go, okay? Now we get back to work and we fix this”, Jack said looking at his team, “Owen, I want the medical files for all of the victims. Toshiko, I need everything you have on the rift alert. Ianto, a cup of coffee?” His team nodded and left to do their work, none of them even looking at his way.

Jack stood up and walked to his office, it seemed he had a lot to do before his team would forgive him, if they ever would. Jack had been angry at the Doctor for decades for leaving him, he couldn’t blame his team for being angry at him. 

***

The rift alert went off after a miraculously quiet afternoon. It was almost six o’clock and they had all been buried in paperwork, Owen hated it.

“What is it?” 

“Looks like a rogue weevil not too far from here”, Tosh said already accessing the CCTV for more information. 

“Oh that’s a weevil alright. Come on Owen, let’s go!” Jack exclaimed and grabbed the coat Ianto handed him. Owen grumbled and followed him, at least he wouldn’t have to stay inside doing paperwork.

They got to the right place quickly and in one piece despite Jack’s driving. Owen had just gotten out of the SUV when he heard Jack shout. Owen took his gun out and was ready to run into the alleyway Jack had disappeared when he saw two people running away from the alley. Two civilians, by the looks of it.

“Jack?” Owen tapped the com. on and prepared to do damage control if necessary.

“I’ve got this, deal with the civilians” Jack sounded winded, but more alive than Owen had heard him sound since he got back.

“Right”, Owen muttered and took his medical bag and approached the two civilians that were staring at the SUV. Before Owen could reach them, they heard a gun go off. Owen saw the two civilians reach for their sides, like they were used to carrying guns, not civilians then, Owen thought.

“What happened?” the woman asked, “And what was that thing?”  
“It was an alien we call weevils”, Jack responded. He was carrying the weevil over his shoulder. 

“And you just had to shoot it?” Owen muttered. At least he had now another chance to study weevil’s anatomy.

“It was acting strangely, the weevil spray didn’t work”, Jack said and dumped the weevil in the trunk.

“Aliens aren’t real, at least it isn’t scientifically proven”

“Well I’d love to show you some aliens that are alive, but right now I’m working”, Jack looked the man up and down making the man blush and the woman roll her eyes. 

“Standard procedure, Owen”, Jack reminded him. 

“I do know how to do my job”, Owen grumbled pulling two water bottles that contained retcon from his medical bag, “I’m Doctor Owen Harper and I’d like to make sure that you didn’t get hurt”

Owen showed them his ID and offered them the water bottles, which they accepted.

“Can you tell me your names?”

“Emily Prentiss and this is Spencer Reid”, Emily answered, not drinking from the bottle he’d given her.

“I suggest you drink some water, you might be going into a shock”, Owen muttered and got Prentiss to sit down on the backseat of the SUV. That seemed to finally convince them that Owen was just trying to help, as they both took a sip from the bottle. Owen shared a look with Jack, now they needed to get them back to where they came from.

“Toshiko! Do a search for Emily Prentiss and Spencer Reid for me, they are both american, so it’s possible that they are here just on holiday. Yes we’ve retconned them already”, Jack said to his com. after he’d glanced at the pair sleeping in the backseat.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The next chapter will probably come out sometime next week, depending how long it takes for me to write it. After chapter 3 I've got two chapters already written and after that I haven't finished any chapters, but I have started to write them. 
> 
> Leave kudos or comment if you liked, it really encourages me to write more!


	4. After the Retcon

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sorry for the long wait! Real life got in the way and I suffered from a major writer's block!  
> Anyway, hope you'll enjoy!
> 
> I don't own anything you can recognize.

Chapter 3

Jack was sitting in his office, still reading through the paperwork from the three months he was away, when Tosh walked in. She had a file in her hand. 

“Toshiko! Good morning”, Jack said, glad to have something else to do even for a short while, “What brings you in my office?”

“I’ve got the information you asked yesterday”, Tosh answered. There was no smile, no wishes for a good morning. Jack’s good mood went down rather quickly. Even Tosh was still mad at him. 

“Okay, let’s gather the team and then you can tell what you found”

***

“Doctor Spencer Reid, born in 1981, currently works for the Behavioral Analysis Unit also known as the BAU. Emily Prentiss, born in 1970, used to work for the BAU and is currently working for the Interpol in London. Her mother is Elizabeth Prentiss, the U.S. ambassador and, according to our records, has been retconned once. I had to hack into the FBI to get this information, and whoever their computer expert is, they are a genius, the FBI’s servers were harder to hack than UNIT”, Toshiko finished. 

“So we just retconned two americans who work for the FBI and the Interpol?” Owen asked. When Toshiko nodded Owen threw his hands in the air, “Retcon better work properly, we don’t need them trying to find us”

“We haven’t had a problem with Retcon in weeks. You said it yourself that it was about the people we retconned, not in Retcon itself”, Gwen reminded Owen.

“Wait, we’ve had problems with Retcon?” Jack asked, shouldn’t he know about this, especially since he’d just ordered Owen to retcon the agents yesterday?

“We had a couple of people remember anyway after the first time we retconned them. Owen researched it and found out that it had something to do with evolution and the fact that all of their parents had been retconned at some point before they were born. We sorted it out with a slightly different Retcon, that will be ready to use in a couple of days”, Gwen explained, her eyes as hard as steel. Jack’s mind was turning, he’d never thought that the people in Cardiff might grow resistant to Retcon.

“I want to know, if that happens again, and I want to see the reports about the newer Retcon”, Jack said and stood up, “and make sure that the agents do not remember what they saw last night!”

***

“Reid! Reid! Spencer!” someone, Emily, was shouting behind his door. She was going to get them kicked out of the hotel, if she continued to shout like that. Reid walked to the door and opened it to find frantic looking Emily behind it ready to knock again. 

“How much do you remember from yesterday?” she asked and walked inside.

“Emily what’s going on?” he asked trying to remember what they had done after they had left the Plass.

“Why can’t I remember how we got back?” panic was creeping into his voice, bt he couldn’t stop it. He had no memory of yesterday afternoon!

“Spencer! It’s okay, alright? It’s not your brain that’s causing you not to remember. I think we were drugged last night by the group that we saw in the restaurant, remember?”, she was standing right in front of him now. Everything she said sounded like it couldn’t be true, but at the same time it felt like it was true. 

“Yesterday, after we left the Plass, we walked around until it was dark. Then we turned back. And when we were walking back we…”, Emily paused, she seemed uncertain how to continue. But she didn’t need to. Everything she said brought images to his head, memories that had been previously lost.

“We, I, saw Maeve”, Reid whispered. Emily nodded.

“I called a friend of mine before coming here, I wanted to know more about this Torchwood”, Emily said quietly. 

“What did you find?”

“That’s just it, I found nothing. My friend said that no one in the whole Interpol has high enough clearance to read their file. Apparently they are ‘outside the government, beyond the police’” Emily threw her hands up in the air in frustration before continuing, “but I have heard about Torchwood before, I just didn’t remember it until this morning. My mother has visited Cardiff before and I can remember her asking about Torchwood and about what they were, but after she came back from Cardiff she never mentioned it again, she never actually even spoke about being in Cardiff, it was like she had never even been here”

“Your mother met them and they drugged her too?” Reid asked already compiling everything they knew about Torchwood, not much, but they would find the truth about them, that was for sure, and maybe, maybe Torchwood could tell him how he had seen Maeve even though she was dead.

***

“We need to find out more about this Torchwood”, Emily muttered and looked around the small coffee shop they’d decided to go after their hurried breakfast at the hotel.

“Oh, are you talking about Torchwood? I love the conspiracy theories people have come up about what they really do!” the young waitress exclaimed and set down their coffees. 

“So you know about Torchwood then?” Reid voiced his suspicion, it was, after all, supposed to be a secret organisation, so secret that not even Emily could get anything more than the name.

“Of course I do! It’s Cardiff’s worst kept secret, everybody knows about it, just not what it does. Most conspiracy theories claim that they deal with aliens, can you believe that!” she rolled her eyes. Emily shared a glance with Reid, they did remember the man in the coat talk about aliens.

“Could you tell us where we could find them?” Emily asked, “We kinda believe in some of those conspiracy theories”

“Just head down to the Plass, that’s where they always go. There’s a tourist information centre, a really lovely bloke works there. He always has a nice suit and sometimes comes here to get scones and coffee. He’ll know more about Torchwood!” she said and dashed of to get more orders.

“Let’s go”, Emily murmured. Reid nodded and got up leaving his half finished coffee behind.

***

Ianto was working in tourist information office. It was quieter up there than down in the Hub, especially now that Jack had returned. Ianto still didn’t know what to think or do. Jack had been gone for over three months, he had left without a word and now that he was back he’d asked Ianto on a date. Really, what was he supposed to do now? The door opening interrupted his train of thought. Ianto glanced up to see the two american agents they had been talking about not a half an hour ago. Ianto was rather glad that he could mask his surprise well.

“Excuse me, we’d like to talk to your boss”, agent Prentiss said looking straight at him. Ianto smiled pleasantly at them and pressed the small button behind the counter that would alert Jack (or whoever was at the Hub) that something was wrong. Ianto just hoped that Jack would remember to check the CCTV first before bursting through the _secret_ door like he had last time.

“I’m sorry, but I’m the only one here”, Ianto replied, “Perhaps you’d like to leave a message?”

“I’m sorry, but this is really important, we really do need to talk to him about Torchwood”, Prentiss said a hint of a smile on her face. _She was really pretty_ , Ianto thought whilst he readied himself for the inevitable outcome, they’d have to be retconned again.

“Ianto, let them in”, Jack’s voice said suddenly in his earpiece.

“Looks like the boss is in after all”, Ianto said and pressed the button to reveal the secret door. He smiled a little at their surprised looks when the door opened, “After you”

He followed them in. This was going to be really interesting.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hope you enjoyed, leave a comment or kudos, please!  
> Next chapter will hopefully come out a bit faster than this did, but I do have two really busy weeks in school, so it might take a while to write. (but don't worry, this will be finished, after all I have written couple chapters already, though I haven't written the next one yet!)


End file.
